AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maybe she could get Zosime alone there, during the day, while all the sailors were up on deck? As long as the other two didn’t join her? Surely even those three would want some time apart?
Yes. That might just work.
With a plan in place, she tiptoed just far enough into the sailors’ quarters to find a waterskin to drain and a chunk of stale bread to force down her salt-stung throat.
Then, tiredness from the long day creeping in, she found one of the few gaps between amphorae, moving the straw just enough that she could squeeze in and cover herself.
And to the gentle sound of clacking clay, surrounded by a cocoon of dry grass, she drifted to sleep.
82
AURELIUS
Aurelius froze, his fingertip a hair’s width from the thorn. Calix just stared, letting the words hang in the sweet air.
Siren?
Aurelius looked back to the flower.
With a sudden realization, he yanked his hand away, tucking it deep into the folds of his toga. “That is one of the five divine chrysalides! The things that turn therians into... into...”
“Exactly,” said Calix. “So will you please walk very, very carefully out of the Grove, before you end up as a monster!”
With steps more cautious than any he’d ever taken, darting his head around to make sure there was no stray thorn lurking underfoot, he high-stepped out of the field and joined Calix.
Only then, panting from the sudden shock, did he process the words.
“You can’t be serious. A siren?”
“Yes.”
“Big blue feathers?”
“Yes. Not now, admittedly. But that is what is inside you.”
Aurelius looked at his hands. They appeared just as they always had. His skin, his fingers, his arms, and after an internal self-check, his body and his mind? All of it felt exactly the same.
And yet, as surprising as it was, as shocking and impossible as it was, it somehow felt... right.
It was like that first time he’d kissed Hal. A sparkling moment when all the accrued questions of his childhood—why he didn’t want to kiss girls or throw rocks at them like all the other boys did—were instantly answered.
Why was he so different from everyone else in Mestibes? Why had he always held affection for Ondocis and their ostentatious culture? Why did nothing thrill him more than making little deals and tricking little people?
Because I am a fucking siren!
“So all of my desires... ?”
“Oh, you mean your desire for money and power and attention and one-upmanship? For unique curios and experiences that no one else has held?”
“Yes. Are they all because I am a siren?”
Calix nodded, before giving the smallest of smiles. “Well, I am sure some of that is just you being an impulsive, impossible little brat. But mostly, yes, I think that is from being a siren. Just as my own youth as a dormant satyr was very indulgent.”
“But... what does that mean?”
“Well, you are in the dormant stage. If you avoid the five chrysalides, it shouldn’t mean anything. You could live your whole life just as you are.”
Aurelius looked back into the field. “And if I had touched one of them?”
